Les portulans grecs by Armand DelatteReview by: George SartonIsis, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Feb., 1949), pp. 71-72Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/227435 .

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Reviews 7' cern for his students. M. Henri Berr, the Direc- tor of the Bibliotheque de Synthese Historique gives in the introduction to the book that is before us the touching testimony of his friends and colleagues; having sat belatedly in his class, I can say that his students' response was such as he would have loved.

"The Zenith of Greek Technical Science," or rather the one half of it which is volume 4, is concerned in its Part I with acoustics, optics and astronomy; a short account of medicine and the natural sciences; and a still shorter one of the sciences of man (i6 pages about Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato and Aristotle!). Part II treats of mathematics. from Hippocrates to Plato. From the obvious unbalance of the chapters, it is very clear that this is the manu- script of a work in progress, handed to a friend to get the benefit of his constructive criticism, but which the conscientious A. Rey could surely not have considered as ready for publication. It would be most unfair in such conditions to hold against the author the factual mistakes which the reader will note here and there (as on p. I22, when a surprisingly modern state- ment of evolution is ascribed to Aristotle, a statement which actually the Master was only quoting, adding at once, "Yet it is impossible that this should be the true view"). Disregard- ing slips like this one, which surely would have been corrected, this volume is delightful read- ing, full of many excellent remarks which one will wish to preserve: the last work, in movingly unpolished state, of a most notable historian and philosopher of science.

PHILIPPE E. LE CORBEILLER Harvard University

ARMAND DELATTE: Les portulans grecs. xxii + 399 + 12 pp., map. Liege: Facult6 de Philosophie et Lettres; Paris: Droz, 1947.

(Bibiotheque de la Faculte de Philosophie et Letters de l'Universite de Liege, fasc. 107).

Prof. Delatte's name is familiar to our readers, since the most important of his works have been reviewed as they appeared, Anecdota atheniensia (2 vols., 1927-39; Isis Z2, 328-30; 33, 274-78). La catoptromancie grecque (1932; ISiS 20, 478- 8o), Herbarius (1936; Isis 27, 531-32; 30, 395). The present volume will increase considerably our debt to him, and especially the debt of his- torians of geography. It contains the text of a whole series of Greek portolani, plus one map. It is annoying, by the way, that the name portolani is given without sufficient discrimi- nation between two very different kinds of ob- jects: (i) texts containing sailing directions for navigators, descriptions of harbors, and safe itineraries, (2) charts which may accompany such texts or occur independently.' It would perhaps be better to keep the word rutter (rou-

1Introd. (2, I047-50; 3, I82, and passim by index).

tier) for the first items, and portolani or nautical charts for the second.

In his Periplus (I897), Adolf Erik Norden- skiold had declared that no Greek rutter was known. It is thus very pleasant to be given here critical editions of a whole series of them. The editor gives in the preface a brief descrip- tion of them which is suffident for this review.

Les portulans qui sont conserves dans les manu- scrits grecs comprennent des elements d'origine di- verse. Le texte le plus etendu et le plus interessant pour l'histoire de la geographie et l'histoire econo- mique de l'Empire byzantin a son declin forme un ouvrage en sept chapitres o'u sont decrites les cotes de la Dalmatie, de l'Albanie, de l'Epire, des Iles loniennes, de la Moree, de la Crete, de Chypre, des Iles de l'Archipel, de l'Egypte, de la Syrie et de la Caramanie. La similitude qu'on observe dans la composition et la redaction de ces chapitres in- dique qu'ils sont l'oeuvre d'un seul et meme auteur. La tradition du texte des manuscrits se presente d'ailleurs sous un aspect assez uniforme, exception faite de la succession des chapitres, qui est differente dans les deux familles AW, VOP, ct aussi de l'ordre des matieres du chapitre consacre

l'Archipel, cette derniere variation etant une consequence de la pr&cedente.

Les autres textes ont une origine differente; chacun d'eux est d'ailleurs independant de ses voi- sins, comme l'indiquent la diversite de la langue et du style et les variations des points de vue. C'est d'abord un portulan abrege ou sont indiquees les positions respectives et les distances des principaux ports et caps de toute la Mediterranee moyenne et orientale; il est conserve dans les manuscrits AVO. Ensuite un portulan de la Pouille (AVO), auquel le ms. 0 a ajoute une description sommaire des autres cotes italiennes; un portulan de la mer de Marmara (A); une liste dc 'traversees' a effectuer dans la Mediterranee (0); un portulan des c&tes meridionale et orientale de la Grece, de celles de la Macedoine, de la Thrace, de l'Asie mineure et de l'Egypte (P).

The capital letters refer to the five MSS used by the editor, to wit, (A) Athens, Boule, dated 1534, (W) Vienna, sixteenth century, (V) Ven- ice, sixteenth century [in this MS the rutters are followed by a martol6gion, that is the toleta (or raxon, or suma) de marteloio of Venetian navigators, enabling them to compute the dis- tance when adverse winds have made a direct course impossible], (0) Vatican, end of the sixteenth century, (P) Paris, Bibiotheque Na- tionale, sixteenth century. The MS of another Greek rutter was discovered in 1559 by Demet- rios Tagias and published by him in Venice 1573; that text was reprinted in i6i8 and I641. The portolano reproduced at the end of De- latte's book was made in the sixteenth century by Nicholas Burdopolos of Patmos.

Note that everything, text and map, derives from late sixteenth-century MSS,2 and hence Nordenskiold's statement is still true if it is un-

'Of course, these MSS may be, and probably are, derived from older ones of uncertain date. The Paris MS (P) seems to have been copied from a MS of the fifteenth century.

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72 Reviews

derstood to refer to Byzantine documents. In my Introduction (2, 1047), I remarked that a Byzantine origin of the portolano is very plau- sible, yet it is still unproved, with one excep- tion, the Stadiasmus maris magni (IV-2) rep- resented by a Madrid MS of the tenth century.

Avant sa mutilation, ce traite [Stadiasmus] n'etait, d'ailleurs, qu'un mediocre resume d'un ouvrage contemporain des debuts de l'empire d'Orient [See Introd. I, 3721. Cet ouvrage ne se bornait pas, comme le titre pourrait le faire croire, h relever les distances des villes et des ports des cotes de la Mediterranee, mais il contenait des in- structions nautiques. I1 d6crivait l'aspect des cotes, le caractere des ports, la nature des vents, il signa- lait les ecucils et les bas-fonds, il indiquait les ma- noeuvres v executer pour aborder, jeter et lcver l'ancre, il fournissait des renseignements concernant l'aiguade etc.

Les portulans que nous editons n'appartiennent pas d la meme tradition. Ils nous offrent une image de la navigation grecque a une epoque oiu Byzance a d'u ceder aux 'Francs' les voies du commerce mari- time. La langue dans laquelle ils sont &rits trahit, en effet, dans le vocabulaire et dans certaines tour- nures, l'influence de la langue 'franque', et notam- ment de la langue venitienne: d'ou il appert que les marins grecs avaient db se mettre a l'ecole des marins de l'Occident et particulierement de ceux de Venise.

The final remarks are significant. The Meta- Byzantine rutters edited by M. Delatte confirm the Italian origin of portolani rather than the Byzantine one. The Stadiasmus, however, is purely Byzantine and earlier than the earliest Western documents. Should we not expect every navigating people-such as the Byzantines, the Arabs, and all the companies of sailors having their mooring places in this or that harbor- to have rutters and portolani of one form or another? It is true much of their information remained unwritten; the existence of a written or delineated rutter is then an accident deter- mined by conditions of literacy rather than by the state of the nauticaI art.

The present edition is completed by a glossary and an index of geographical names. The Greek portolano is reproduced in large size and yet the names of places can hardly be read even with a magnifying glass. GEORGE SARTON

JOSEPH F. ROCK: The ancient Na-khi King- dom of Southwest China. 2 volumes, xx + 554 pp., 256 pL (Harvard-Yenching Institute, Monograph Series, 8 and 9). Cambridge: University Press, 1947. $25.00

In my Introduction (3, I85I), when I was announcing Dr Rock's life-long studies on the Na-khi tribe, known to the Chinese as Mo-so, I did not expect that the first volumes of his work would appear as soon as they did. Thanks to the author's devotion and the generosity of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, we are now given these two splendid volumes, which are the first of a series and may be called the historical

and geographical introduction to it. They are illustrated with I6 groups of z6 plates each (in all 256 plates) which form an admirable collec- tion, unique of its kind, and with four large maps folded in a pocket. The region elaborately described and depicted in these volumes is hardly known to the Western world, for it has been visited at best by two or three Europeans including the author. It includes parts of N.W. Yin-nan, Hsi-k'ang, Tibet, S.W. Ssu-ch'uan. The history of the Na-khi Kingdom and more generally of Yin-nan set forth in these volumes begins in 280 B. C. and extends to the present day. The languages dealt with are not only Chinese and Tibetan, but also the Na-khi language, preserved in a curious pictographic literature, which is now completely decipher- able.'

The present volumes do not contain much of direct interest to historians of science (except a few references to medical plants) but they are the necessary foundation for later ones wherein the Na-khi or Mo-so culture will be de- scribed. The author was not content to "visit" the region in the manner of explorers who try to cover as much territory as possible in the shortest time; he spent twelve years in it, in the service first of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, then of the NationaI Geographic Society, and finally for the fulfilment of his own scientific needs.

He began the actual writing of this work in '934,

not dreaming that serious interruptions would de- lay its completion for over a decade. We were twice evacuated from Yiin-nan when it was invaded by the Chinese Red Army and I was forced to send my entire library to the Indo-Chinese border. We packed again when Japanese bombers visited K'un- ming (Yiin-nan fu) and left death and destruction in their wake. To prevent possible destruction of my library, I moved to Dalat, Indo-China, where, after a year and a half of residence, it again be- came necessary to pack up and transfer my library to Honolulu. These many interruptions and the hectic wecks and months of delay form the most unpleasant part of my experiences.

A critical discussion of the present volumes and an appraisal of Dr Rock's contribution to Chinese historiography is a task which must be left to Sinologists and is outside the scope of Isis. It was my fortunate privilege to meet the author at the Arnold Arboretum on I5 May 1946. He then showed me specimens of Na-khi pictorial writings and explained his ambitious

1 The Na-khi people possess two types of script, the one syllabic written with characters resembling simple Chinese characters and Lo-lo (No-su) ones, the othcr pictographic. The syllabic writing has degenerated rather than improved; strange to say, the pictographic script developed considerably later than the other. Whilc the syllabic script was bor- rowed from elscwhere (Chinese Tibet?), the pic- tographic is indigcnous. See pp. 9i n., 471, pas- sim. For the Na-khi chronicles, see pp. 66-71, 76-i6I.

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